Hartford's Mark Twain House has planned a number of "chilling" events Thursday, July 25, through Saturday, July 27, including a free ice cream social and evening ghost tours.

Hartford's Mark Twain House has planned a number of "chilling" events Thursday, July 25, through Saturday, July 27, including a free ice cream social and evening ghost tours.

Photo: Contributed Photo

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Hartford's Mark Twain House has planned a number of "chilling" events Thursday, July 25, through Saturday, July 27, including a free outdoor ice cream social. Twain and his family are shown relaxing on the porch of the house in this vintage photo. less

Hartford's Mark Twain House has planned a number of "chilling" events Thursday, July 25, through Saturday, July 27, including a free outdoor ice cream social. Twain and his family are shown relaxing on the ... more

Photo: Contributed Photo

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Hartford's Mark Twain House has planned a number of "chilling" events Thursday, July 25, to Saturday, July 27, including evening ghost tours on Friday and Saturday.

Hartford's Mark Twain House has planned a number of "chilling" events Thursday, July 25, to Saturday, July 27, including evening ghost tours on Friday and Saturday.

Photo: Contributed Photo

Image 4 of 4

Weekend of chills at Twain House

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For ghoulish delights and "chilling" good times, the place to be the next few days is at Hartford's Mark Twain House.

Festivities kick off Thursday, July 25, with a free Ice Cream Social and continue on Friday, July 26, with a program featuring epic fantasy fiction author Terry Brooks; after-hours ghost tours at the mansion Friday and Saturday, July 26-27; and a walking tour of Hartford's Cedar Hill Cemetery on Saturday, July 27.

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On Friday, at 7:30 p.m., author Brooks will be at the Twain House to celebrate the release of his latest novel, "Witch Wraith: The Dark Legacy of Shannara," which the museum says explores "the corners of his imagination, where elves, trolls, gnomes and other dark things dare to dwell."

Since 1977, Brooks has written more than two dozen novels about the Shannara, a noble family of half-elf, half-human beings who live in the fantasy world of Four Lands. More than 21 million copies of his books are reportedly in print.

Tickets are $25; benefit tickets are $65, which include a 5:30 p.m. reception with Brooks.

The museum's enormously popular Graveyard Shift Ghost Tours return for a limited two-day run on Friday and Saturday. Four tours will be given nightly, from 6 to 9 p.m. on the hour; participation is by reservation only at 860-280-3130. Tickets are $20 for age 17 and older; and $13 for ages 10 to 16. Tours are not recommended for those younger than 10.

Featured on the Syfy Channel's popular "Ghost Hunters" and "Ghost Hunters Academy," as well as the Biography Channel's "My Ghost Story," the Mark Twain House has long been associated with afterlife apparitions, much in part to "Twain's own interest in the supernatural.

Spiritualism and ghostly tales were a big part of the Gilded Age, an age of uncertainty, materialism and spectacular credulity much like ours," the museum points out.

"Don't believe in ghosts? Decide for yourself on these hour-long guided tours (that take) you through the main house, the servants' wing and down into the basement, normally off-limits to visitors," according to the museum.

The museum says the tours are as "educational as they are goosebump-inducing."

On Saturday, a walk-and-talk tour will be offered off site at the Cedar Hill Cemetery, 435 Fairfield Ave. in Hartford. Historian and author Steve Courtney, of the Twain Museum, will lead the tour that focuses on "The American Civil War as Seen by Mark Twain." At the "classic Gilded Age cemetery," participants will "visit the graves and hear the stories of some of Hartford's best-known veterans, most of them friends of Sam Clemens," Courtney writes.

The event is a prelude to a Twain House major exhibition -- "An Inglorious Peace or a Dishonorable War: Mark Twain's Views on Conflict" -- that opens Thursday, Oct. 3.

Saturday's program will begin at 10 a.m. and is expected to last about two hours. A $5 fee benefits the cemetery foundation. (Participants are advised to enter the cemetery driveway and park near the flagpole.)